


Be Still (that's what I told my heart)

by Farasha



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, M/M, Miscommunication, References to Depression, Retirement, Soul Bond, Zine: Legacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 08:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17382788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Farasha/pseuds/Farasha
Summary: In the movies, the kind of bad ones Mama used to get cast in when Yuri was much younger, everyone always knows. The camera goes soft focus, fuzzing the edges of everything on the screen. The lighting turns soft, all pinks and yellows. Their eyes meet. Their hands touch. The music swells. They kiss.It's nothing like in the movies, not for him.





	Be Still (that's what I told my heart)

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was originally written for Legacy: A Victurio Anthology. The zine is still available for name-your-own-price sale, however, I can't post a link to it here due to AO3's advertisement policy. Benefits from sales go to the Rainbow Railroad, a non-profit organization.
> 
> In this AU, Yuuri was too tired to go to the banquet and hid in his room. Victor and Yuuri never met outside of competition, and didn't have a whirlwind night in Sochi.

In the movies, the kind of bad ones Mama used to get cast in when Yuri was much younger, everyone always _knows_. The camera goes soft focus, fuzzing the edges of everything on the screen. The lighting turns soft, all pinks and yellows. Their eyes meet. Their hands touch. The music swells. They kiss.

Nobody has ever explained, fully, what it's like to have a bond. Mama doesn't have one, though she's spent a little less than half her life—all of Yuri's life—chasing one. Dedushka doesn't have one, Yuri is sure, because he would have said. Yakov has one, with his ex-wife, the one who used to teach Victor ballet, but Yuri isn't going to ask. He might be reckless, but he isn't stupid. Georgi keeps thinking he has one, but Yuri thinks that Georgi would melodrama his way right into marriage and kids if he could, so Yuri doesn't pay attention to anything Georgi says about it. Mila doesn't have one and doesn't seem like she wants one.

It's nothing like in the movies, not for him. It isn't sudden, and it isn't soft. It's like the slow creep of an oil spill across the water, silent, tainted, and poisonous. The first time he feels it, he's in practice, in the middle of a Biellmann spin, his fingers hooked around the cold edge of his skate blade, a slight pull in his groin muscle, a sensation in his back like all his vertebrae are compressed and expanded at once. 

Yuri knows what a good spin feels like, knows when it's right, so the sudden sick pulse in his stomach catches him by surprise. He fumbles and drops his skate blade, slowing his rotation and stopping. He feels dizzy, when he hasn't felt dizzy coming out of a spin in years. Something rolls in his stomach like the time he drank sour milk out of Yakov's fridge. It feels foreign, like someone else reaching into his guts to shake them around. The feeling lasts a couple of seconds and then is replaced by a staggering tide of another feeling, a hot ache deep in his chest that makes his lungs go tight and his gut twinge like he's going to throw up.

It's because it's coming from outside himself that it takes Yuri a minute to understand what he's feeling. He can't put his finger on the first feeling, the one that made him nauseous and dizzy, but he knows the way his throat closes and his insides twist. This is how he felt the last time he yelled at Dedushka, this head-to-toe flood of shame pulsing through his body.

"Yura!" Yakov shouts, a full-throated bellow that makes him jump, and Yuri skates over to the boards with angry strokes of his blades.

"What?" he snaps. He squirts some water over his head, because he's flushed and sweaty, and notices his hands are shaking. He tries to shove this feeling away, stop some of the prickling on his skin, and it does ebb out of him a little. Good. He doesn't think he could go through practice like that.

Yakov dresses him down for releasing the spin too early and losing his form. He thinks Yuri got distracted, which is true, but Yuri insists he wasn't distracted and felt something wrong in his skate boot. That's the wrong thing to say because it takes him off the ice and over to the equipment people at the rink, where he crosses his arms and scowls and lets them fuss. It's Oksana, one of the rink staffers that Yuri does usually get along with, but he feels off-balance and it makes him want to shy away from her hands on his skate.

He looks around the rink while she does it, watching the others go through practice. Victor is on the ice, gliding lazily on one foot. Yuri watches his edges, tuning out Oksana fussing over his skate. Victor likes his blades to bite deep. Yuri tried to sharpen his the same way once, back when he was twelve and thought the secret to being great was to do everything Victor did, like he was being dragged in Victor's wake. He didn't have the body weight for the edges to make enough difference, and he hadn't liked the way it felt. He has his own preferences now.

Something rises in his chest as he watches Victor begin to wind up for a jump. It feels as foreign as the sick sensation from before, but at the same time, it's so familiar Yuri can taste it on the back of his tongue. It's satisfaction burning through him, a hot pulse of it as Victor's feet leave the ice, his body twists in the air, and he comes down on one foot, blade biting chips out of the ice. Yuri scowls at the rink, feeling like his skin is getting hotter, and narrows his eyes at Victor as he immediately moves into another jump, like he's going through his quad repertoire in order.

 _I can do that, too_ , Yuri thinks, sour and vicious as Victor takes off into a salchow. _You aren't special, old man_.

Victor pops his jump and lands a double. The anger swelling in Yuri's chest falters. For a moment, their eyes meet, Yuri from the bench and Victor from center ice, and a sharp pulse of confusion stretches between them like a wire pulled taut.

Then everything he was feeling, the foreign sense of satisfaction and relief that had been sitting like a bright little light in the back of Yuri's mind, is sheared off like it's cut by a knife. Like a door slamming in his face. Yuri jerks, nearly yanking his skate boot out of the Oksana's hands, and stares with his mouth open as Victor skates laps around the rink at speed, the way Yuri has watched the hockey coach make his players do when they make him angry.

"I don't see anything wrong with this," Oksana says. "What exactly did it feel like?"

"Nothing," Yuri says. "Maybe I imagined it, whatever. Can I go?"

Oksana doesn't frown like Yakov does when he's rude. She only looks a little amused and pats the top of his boot. "Go on."

Yuri tears through the rest of practice. Every time he looks at Victor, he remembers that feeling, the churn of his stomach and the full-body flush of shame that came afterward. Victor won't even look at him. He spends the rest of practice pretending that Yuri doesn't exist, and it only makes Yuri angrier, until he's slamming his locker and throwing his things in his gym bag and storming out to meet Yakov by his car with fury stewing under his skin.

"What's gotten into you?" Yakov asks, as Yuri hurls his bag into the trunk.

"Nothing," Yuri snaps. "It's none of your business."

Yakov doesn't deign to answer that, only gives Yuri an incredibly unimpressed look that tells Yuri everything he needs to know about Yakov's opinion of his attitude. He throws himself into the car with almost as much force as his bag went into the trunk and slams the door, scowling at everything.

Yakov lets them continue on in infuriated silence for a few minutes before he breaks it. "You've mastered the basics at your level, and you have multiple quads. That was enough to excel in Juniors, but Seniors will be a much more difficult challenge. You'll need to define your brand and your image, and we'll need to take a more thorough look at your choreography than we have in the past."

"Victor is doing my short program," Yuri says, still scowling at the window.

"Does Victor know that?" Yakov asks. If he's surprised, he doesn't show it.

"He promised me he would. Three years ago in Moscow. You were there."

"You might want to remind him," Yakov says. There's something gruff but almost cautious in his voice, like he expects Yuri to be angry that Victor probably forgot about him. Like Yuri didn't expect that in the first place.

"Yeah, yeah."

Yakov leaves him alone when they're home. Yuri holes up in his room, curled up on his bed with Potya snug in the curve of his body. Now that he's alone, not surrounded by rink staff and other skaters and Yakov, he can actually think.

He knows what he felt on the ice. If he'd had any doubt, the way that feeling cut off when Victor saw him looking would confirm it.

Victor is his _bonded_.

Yuri punches a pillow, swearing through clenched teeth, startling Potya. She yowls her displeasure and abandons him in favor of his desk, grooming herself with her back turned. Yuri punches the pillow harder, rage bubbling up inside him. It had to be stupid Victor, with his stupid perfect skating and his stupid five gold medals and his stupid quad flip.

From all the movies and the stories, a soulbond is supposed be unbreakable and completely unignorable, but Victor cut him off like it was nothing. Something else wells up beside the anger, and he can't blame it on any outside source this time. It hurts, all the way down deep where he doesn't want to admit it, remembering the way Victor's face had gone blank while he simply tossed Yuri aside.

If Victor thinks he can get rid of Yuri that easily, thinks he can forget and discard Yuri like he doesn't even matter, Yuri will make sure to prove him wrong.

The next day at practice, he storms right up to Victor and pokes him right in the chest. "I'm not going to let you ignore me."

He sees startlement on Victor's face, a brief flash of panic where his blue eyes dart around the rink like he's trying to find out who's watching.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Yura," he says, breezy, his usual fake smile pulling his mouth wide.

"I'm debuting in Seniors this season, and you're supposed to choreograph my short program. Don't think I'm going to let you forget."

"Mm." Victor pushes his fingers through his hair, resettling his fringe like he does when he doesn't know what to say. Yuri has been watching him for years, he knows that gesture. "I thought Yakov wanted to bring Lilia Baranovskaya in to work on your choreo."

"He _what?_ " Yuri yelps, and spins around to find Yakov scowling at the pair of them.

It's only later, after he's yelled at Yakov about not needing ballet and Yakov has yelled back about Yuri being delusional if he thinks he knows what's best for his career at this stage, that he realizes what Victor did. The distraction was so effective it was like a targeted missile strike.

"Victor is still doing my short program," he insists stubbornly.

"Will you be telling Victor that, or will I?" Yakov asks, clearly expecting Yuri to try and fail.

"Watch me," Yuri hisses, and throws his skate guards against a bench before taking the ice.

Victor is on the other side of the rink. Yuri doesn't go over there right away, just watches from a distance. It looks like he's working on a program, something new, something with long, elegant movements of his arms, light steps across the ice that make him almost look like he's prancing. It's kind of funny-looking, for a guy his size. Victor is beautiful, but his body is built for power as well as grace. Delicacy is something that, although he hates to admit it, is probably better suited for Yuri.

It's like Victor feels him looking. He pauses in the middle of the step sequence, rotating slowly on one skate blade. Yuri takes it as his cue to skate over. He stops like he's seen the hockey players do, with his edges, throwing snow all over Victor's pants.

"What were you working on?"

"Nothing special," Victor says. He doesn't seem at all thrown off by Yuri's aggressive approach. It makes Yuri seethe, a little, that Victor finds him so easy to ignore.

"Maybe you should start working on my short program," he says, glaring.

"How did you know I wasn't?" Victor asks, that enigmatic smile playing on his lips. "And what makes you think I will?"

Yuri feels that like a hot knife between his ribs. His hands curl up into fists, and he wants so badly to punch that smug look off Victor's face.

"You _promised_." He tries to make it sound like he's more angry than hurt, more offended than rejected. He still hates how much it makes him sound like a little kid. The stupid little smile falls away from Victor's face. He looks solemn as he considers Yuri, one finger tapping on his lips, his eyes traveling over Yuri from head to toe. Yuri feels his cheeks turning red, a hot twist in his stomach.

"I'll choreograph your program on one condition." Victor's eyes are glittering with that infuriating look, the one that says he knows a joke nobody else is in on.

"I'll do it."

"Wait until you hear the condition first."

"I can handle anything you throw at me, old man," Yuri spits.

"Can you?" One of Victor's delicate silver eyebrows arches. The urge to punch him in the face grows stronger. "Here's the condition: whatever I come up with when it comes to music and choreography, you skate it no matter what."

"That's stupid! You're just going to do some dumb program that'll make me look bad so you can make me go away." Yuri isn't an idiot. He knows Victor's game. It infuriates him even more that Victor thinks he's so easy. "Whatever! Go right ahead! I don't care!"

"You think you're ready to choose your own image? Your first season in Seniors is when you get to show everyone what you're capable of, but it also shapes how you'll be perceived for the rest of your career." The look in Victor's eyes turns a little skeptical. Yuri bristles at it.

"I know I'm going to be the best," he insists.

"If you're going to be the best, you need a program that's the best. I can do that, but I don't have time to redo it six times because you don't like it. Deal?"

"Deal." Yuri doesn't even hesitate. He sticks out his hand, scowling. "Shake on it so I know you aren't going to forget again."

Victor looks amused again when he takes Yuri's hand and squeezes. For just a hint of a moment, something happens while they're touching skin to skin. There's a shiver of a feeling that comes from outside himself, one that feels like remembering things he's forgotten. When Victor lets go of his hand, it's gone.

Yakov takes the news that Victor will be choreographing about as well as he takes everything else. He yells, until Yuri gets bored and tunes him out. Then he introduces Yuri to Lilia Baranovskaya, who's exactly the kind of witch Yuri thought she would be. She looks at Yuri like he's a bug she wants to crush underfoot, but won't deign to do so because it would dirty her shoes. He fights the urge to roll his eyes, because he thinks she might actually murder him if he does. 

As he lets his attention wander from her lecture, he catches Victor looking at him from the ice. He's smiling. It looks... weirdly fond. Maybe commiserating. Something like a laugh hangs in the air between them for a breath. Yuri finds himself smiling back before he thinks about it, a little quirk of the corner of his mouth. Victor seems to shake himself, going back to skating figures, and the moment is shattered. Yuri feels it like a shot to the heart. Victor falters, out on the ice, and glances over his shoulder for a second before he visibly pushes himself to continue.

 _I heard you_ , he thinks, tries to force in Victor's direction as hard as he can. He doesn't know if it works like that, but he can try.

"Yuri! Are you listening?" Yakov barks.

"Yeah!" Yuri says, automatic, his attention going right back to Lilia. He couldn't repeat what she's just said if she asked him to.

She doesn't ask. "We'll begin tomorrow at six in the morning. I'll expect you to have your things packed to move by that evening."

"Wait, what?!" 

They both look down at him, unimpressed. Yuti can kiss the whole 'listening' charade goodbye now, he guesses.

Moving in with Lilia takes three days, because she doesn't like the way he packs the first time and makes him do it again. In those three days, Yuri discovers a whole new level of gruelling work for his body.

He's danced for cross-training since he was small, always to help his center and maintain his flexibility. This is an entirely different level of intensity. He's never paid attention to the aesthetic line of his body so closely, or the way his form occupies space.

"Don't hunch your shoulder! More extension! Your chin should be lifted!" Lilia pulls on the wrist of Yuri's extended hand, moving it into a position that makes the tendon in his armpit burn. He didn't know that part of his body could stretch.

"What does it matter what my arms look like? It's the jumps that get the points!"

Lilia narrows her eyes at him in the mirror. She walks to the far end of the room, rising onto the balls of her feet. Like Yuri, she isn't dancing _en pointe_ as she leads into a triple toe, double toe on the sprung wood floor with one arm, then both arms above her head. Yuri knows he's staring with his mouth open, but he can't bring himself to close it.

"Can you do that on the ice?" she asks, breathing only a little hard. Yuri shakes his head, mute. "I can teach you to, and that will get you a bonus. I can teach you to build stamina for the second half instead of expending your energy in the first. It all comes from discipline, precision, and commitment to detail."

Yuri doesn't question her, after that. Things between him and Lilia might actually be okay.

Victor is another story. They haven't started working on Yuri's short program yet, but it isn't that much of a concern. Yuri is pretty sure Victor is working on something, with the way he keeps standing at the side of the rink and tapping his mouth with his slender fingers while he watches Yuri skate.

He's so stupidly pretty it shouldn't be allowed, is what Yuri thinks. He goes into the backward entry for a salchow, keeping his eyes on Victor until the last second. Yuri has always loved and hated having Victor as a rinkmate. He's a pain in the ass, flighty, forgetful, a rink hog in the worst way, because he just forgets he's ever supposed to stop skating. At the same time, watching him skate is like being transported somewhere else. He has a connection to the ice Yuri has never been able to feel.

His chest is bubbling with that nasty, oily feeling again, the one he'd felt from Victor those few weeks ago, when he'd realized what they were to each other. This time, it's all coming from him, nothing from Victor at all. This time, because he has the thoughts that come with the feeling, Yuri recognizes it for what it is.

He's jealous. That's what the insidious, oily feeling is. The thought makes him wind down the jumping pass he was going to make and look for Victor along the boards. He's jealous of how Victor is on the ice, that connection Yuri never seems to be able to find. And Victor was jealous the other day, when Yuri had first realized about the bond. Jealous of what?

Yuri skates over to the boards, stopping next to Victor. "What are you doing for my short?"

"I haven't quite settled on it yet," Victor says.

"Have you even been working on it?" Yuri demands. It's early still, only April, but Yuri doesn't want to fall behind in preparations.

"I've decided on the music." Victor's fingers rest against his lips, his bright blue eyes staring off into the middle distance. He goes unfocused, looking out across the rink, falling into silence.

Yuri wonders what Victor is feeling. A little jolt of shock goes through him when he remembers that he _can_ know what Victor is feeling, or at least he could before Victor did whatever he did to make it stop. Yuri can't really figure out the feeling tangled up in his own chest, now, a combination of frustration and burning curiosity and... longing, maybe. He has a soulbond with someone who seems like he doesn't want to say five words to Yuri at a time.

"Do I get to hear it some time soon? Are you trying to make sure I don't have a program that can compete with you?" Yuri has no idea what's going on in Victor's head and it's making him crazy. He hates this mysterious charmer act Victor puts on when he's trying to hide how much he doesn't know what he's doing.

Victor laughs at him, which does a nice job of settling down Yuri's confusion over his feelings. Now he's just angry. It's better than the mess that was inside him before.

"I was going to use the piece for my own short program. There's a companion piece arranged around the same musical theme that I would have used for my free, but if I'm giving you the short, maybe I'll just use the companion piece as my own short." Victor taps his fingers against his lips.

Yuri is back to not knowing how he feels. He doesn't want Victor's hand-me-downs, but when Victor commissions pieces for his programs, they're always stunning. Yuri wants a program that will elevate his skill, force him to train harder and skate better. If Victor is putting Yuri on his level, that'll do it. Still, something bothers him.

"What's the use having matching programs?" Yuri asks, remembering what it felt like to be cut off and shoved away as soon as they both realized what was happening.

"What do you mean?" Victor honestly seems surprised. It makes Yuri even madder.

"It's not like you care at all about..." Yuri gestures between the two of them with his hand, wordlessly. It's the closest he's ever gotten to acknowledging the bond outright.

The playful look slips off Victor's face immediately, his hands falling to the edge of the boards, gripping the rail. His eyes dart to Yuri for a split second before refocusing on the ice. His throat moves in a swallow. If Yuri didn't know him so well, he'd think Victor is scared.

"It doesn't have to be anything," he says. It sounds like he's trying to convince himself.

"Doesn't have to be anything," Yuri repeats, his voice flat. "You mean you don't want it to be anything."

It's not even that Yuri wants to be boyfriends with Victor, or anything. Everyone says that soulbonds don't have to be romantic, and Victor infuriates Yuri more often than not. It's just that, if the universe has decided they should be in each other's heads, it must mean something.

If he's honest with himself, though, he doesn't _not_ want to be boyfriends with Victor. It's one of those idle fantasies that makes him feel stupid, a pipe dream he knows is next to unattainable. For one suspended moment when he figured out what this was, he thought, _maybe_. Now he knows better. Victor doesn't want the bond. Doesn't want him. Yuri doesn't know why that makes his heart sink into his stomach. It's not like he ever really had a chance in the first place.

"Do you want to hear the program music?" Victor is good at changing subjects. Yuri doesn't really want to let it drop, but he does want to hear the music.

He comes over to Victor's apartment for dinner that evening. Yuri feels like he's been hungry all the time since his ballet training has intensified, or maybe he's just finally putting on his growth spurt. He hopes not; if he has to re-learn his body before his senior debut, he doesn't think he'll have the season he wants. He eats one and a half helpings and then sneaks the rest of the chicken to Makkachin, trying to keep a straight face every time Victor looks sharply at him.

"Stop it," Victor finally says. "You'll make him fat."

"I thought that's why we eat food like this, so we don't get fat." Yuri scratches Makkachin behind the ears. He may not be Potya, but he's pretty great.

They move to the living room, and Victor finally cues up the short program music.

Two seconds in, all Yuri can feel is annoyance. As the pieces goes on longer, filling the living room with soaring, choral voices, the annoyance mounts. Victor leans back in his chair, watching Yuri's face with a wrinkle between his eyebrows.

"You don't like it?"

"It sounds like church music," Yuri says, sticking his tongue out. "This isn't me."

The corner's of Victor's mouth lift, but it's a flat smile. Again, Yuri wonders what he's feeling. He almost reaches out to grab Victor's hand, remembering the way he'd felt Victor for a split second when their skin touched.

"What's 'you' and what's winning program material are two different things, Yura. You want to be taken seriously as a competitor, right? Not give everyone an excuse to call you a kid."

"That's what this will do!" Yuri bursts out, frustration fizzling in his chest. "It's like some kind of Disney crap! How is this supposed to say I'm ready to compete with the seniors?"

"Coming out covered in leopard print and skating to Def Leppard isn't going to make you seem more mature," Victor says, and Yuri hates that little smirk on his face more than anything else right now.

"Oh, like coming out half-naked in what you basically _said_ was fetish gear was any better?"

"That was a juniors program for a reason." Victor looks like he's practically pouting, and Yuri gives himself a point. "You weren't there when Yakov yelled at me about it. I wanted to do that program so bad, but nobody saw it the way I saw it. You're calling this 'Disney crap,' but it's a mature choice, it reflects an artistic theme."

"You just want to make sure nobody looks at me and thinks I'm ready to kick you off the top of the podium." Yuri is sick of Victor trying to make it seem like he's doing this for Yuri's benefit. If he'd known that Victor would dick him around like this, he never would have asked.

"I'm not dicking you around," Victor says, and then stops, biting his lip. Yuri's thoughts stutter to a halt in his head. He feels like he's been plunged into ice water. For a hanging moment of stillness, everything around them seems frozen. Yuri's heart starts to pound.

"You can hear me," he says, too stunned to say anything else. He remembers some of the things he's thought about Victor in the past few days and feels... he doesn't know what. He should be embarrassed. His face is heating up, flushing red, but he doesn't think it's embarrassment. "I can't hear you anymore, after whatever you did, but you can hear me."

"I can always hear you," Victor says, with a little shrug. "Or feel you."

"Why can't I hear you?" Yuri demands, his voice shaking. He's _angry_ , furious, the tremor in his voice coursing through his whole body until he has to grip his knees to keep his hands still. Victor could hear him, know what he was thinking and feeling this whole time, and he was... he was using it against Yuri.

"I'm not using anything against you," Victor says quickly, and Yuri glares at him. "I can't block you out, and you apparently can't keep anything in. I stopped you from hearing me, that's why you can't—"

" _Why?_ Why would you do that?" Yuri shouts, as he jumps up from his seat on the couch, his hands balled against his thighs. He wants to punch Victor in his stupid perfect face.

"Because you don't deserve that," Victor says, and Yuri can't believe how soft and earnest he looks when he says it, like he isn't just rejecting Yuri's worth out of hand, and Yuri is out the door before he can think to do anything else. He lets it slam behind him, hard, and stomps down the stairs as fast as he can.

His eyes are wet. His throat feels like there's a lump lodged in it. He feels like he can't breathe with how much all of it hurts. He should have known it was something like that, something like Victor not wanting him, not wanting to be stuck with him.

His phone rings in his pocket. He ignores it. He walks home, even though it's late, even though Victor lives far enough from Yakov that he shouldn't do it. Then he remembers all his stuff has been moved to Lilia's, and that Yakov is packing his things in preparation for moving in with the both of them (the most awkward thing Yuri can think of in his entire life), and leans his head against the door with a thump.

There's a shuffle from the inside, and Yakov opens the door abruptly enough for Yuri to tumble in.

"What are you doing here?" he asks, frowning down at Yuri in confusion. It's gruff, but Yuri can tell the difference now between when Yakov is grumpy and when he's actually annoyed.

"Walked from Victor's. I forgot I moved." Yuri flops facedown on the couch, hugging one of the pillows to his chest.

"You walked from Victor's? He didn't drive you?"

Yuri looks up to see Yakov angrily jabbing buttons on his phone. "I left before he could say anything. It's fine, I'm here now aren't I?"

Yakov spears him with a narrow-eyed look, like he's the one who can hear the inside of Yuri's head and not Victor. He puts his phone away and sinks into his armchair. A book lays face down on the side table, like Yuri interrupted his reading. Yuri rolls over onto his back, staring at the ceiling.

"Did you call Lilia?"

"She thinks I'm spending the night at Victor's, it's fine." Yuri reaches for his phone anyway, just to have something to do. He has five missed calls from Victor and a text asking if he's safe.

 _fine so fuck off_ , he texts back, and then sends a middle finger emoji for good measure.

He doesn't know why it hurts so much. He'd already assumed that Victor wanted nothing to do with their soulbond, with Yuri, so hearing him say it out loud shouldn't feel like this. He kicks his toes against the arm of the couch, rolls over until he's facing Yakov, and gathers his courage.

"What's having a bond like?"

Yakov pauses in the middle of turning a page. Slowly, he puts his book down on the side table and pushes his reading glasses down his nose so he can look at Yuri over the frames. Yuri feels like he's being studied, which isn't really a new sensation where Yakov is concerned. Maybe another time he'd snap the question again, but he feels too tired and wounded to muster up his usual anger.

"Invasive," Yakov says, which isn't the word Yuri thought he'd use. "Lilia was always in my head, and I was always in hers. It was hard telling where I stopped and she began, sometimes. When we were apart, it was muted, but then it felt like some of me had been ripped out and carried across the world."

"Is that why you stopped? Because it got in the way of skating?" Yuri feels like he's possessed with a strange kind of reckless courage. It's like, the worst thing possible has already happened, so he isn't afraid of what else might happen. So what if Yakov yells? It won't be the first or the last time.

"It never got in the way of my skating," Yakov says, and now he sounds pensive. Wistful, maybe. There's his usual undercurrent of general displeasure with the world, but Yuri isn't crazy; the softer things are there too. "I used it, on the ice. I put how much I missed her and how incomplete I felt without her in to every performance. It was Lilia's dancing that suffered, and that was unacceptable to her. She chose to seal off her side of the bond."

"You can do that?" Yuri asks, even though he's felt firsthand what it's like when someone does that.

"It takes a lot of effort. At first, we both bled into each other, even as much as we tried not to. After some time, though, it began to feel normal." Yakov shakes himself out of what looks like it'll be an excellent melancholy and scowls at Yuri. "Enough of that. Did you eat, while you were at Victor's?"

Yuri had, and so Yakov shoos him off to shower and to bed. It feels strange going to sleep without Potya there, in this space that used to be his home but isn't anymore.

 _I don't need you_ , he thinks, as loud as he can, trying to shove it in Victor's direction. He doesn't know what he's doing or how to do any of it, but he wants to make sure Victor knows he doesn't care.

They avoid each other at the rink. Yakov tries to ask about Yuri's short program and he deflects, saying he wants to work on his free skate first. Yakov is suspicious, and Lilia disapproving, though neither of those things are any big change from what was going on already.

He and Victor share a space, and they share friends, so it's hard to completely stop talking to each other, but Yuri manages it. It's stupidly obvious what he's doing, and every time Mila raises an eyebrow as he stops mid-sentence and walks away from an approaching Victor, he feels like a petty little kid. He just... doesn't want to talk to Victor. He doesn't want to see Victor paste on that hideous, stretched smile, like someone is pulling his cheeks to the right place but forgetting to put it in his eyes. He doesn't want to watch Victor act like nothing changed, nothing happened. Yuri is nothing to him, not a rival or a successor or a protege or a bonded. So Victor will be nothing to Yuri.

It lasts about a week, until Yakov starts really getting on his case about the short program music. He still hates the music Victor chose, but he's been watching Victor skate through the motions of what Yuri assumes is his short, and he can see how it's a competition piece through and through. He'd rather Potya use him as a scratching post than have to skate up to Victor and swallow down how pissed he is, but Yakov is always telling him he needs to be more professional, and what's more professional than working with your bondmate that you despise? His coaches are doing it.

"Yakov needs me to show him some progress on the short program," Yuri says, blunt and without preamble, as Victor slows to match his pace on the ice. "So, I'll do your dumb Agape or whatever, because it's not like I have another choice."

"Yura," Victor says. It's soft, and despite himself, Yuri looks up at him, raising his eyes from where he'd been glaring at the tops of Victor's skate boots. "If you hate it that much, I'll do something else."

His rage wavers, uncertain, and he scoffs. "Like you care."

"I do care." The worst part is, Victor actually sounds like he does. "If you hate the theme and hate the emotion it evokes, you'll never be successful skating the program. I should give you something more aggressive, something fast, that'll complement your free skate."

Yuri swallows, a lump thick in his throat. It isn't fair that Victor can act like this, like he actually cares about Yuri's success, and keep him on the outside looking in.

"Fine. Just tell me when you have something."

"Yura," Victor says again, and this time he reaches out to catch Yuri's hand as he skates away.

As their bare skin touches for a brief second, Yuri feels dizzy with guilt and regret. His own confused fury is momentarily engulfed by an emotion so strong he actually bites his tongue to distract from it or he might cry. Victor drops his hand a split second later, but it's _there_ , swimming around under his skin.

"If you feel so bad about it, why do you keep cutting me off?" Yuri demands, spinning around to face him. He reaches for Victor's hands, and Victor draws them back.

"You took it the wrong way, but I meant what I said in the apartment." Victor's voice is so gentle. "You don't deserve to feel what's inside my head, Yura. It's too much."

"And this isn't too much?" Yuri waves at himself. "Sometimes I feel like I wake up angry and I'm just pissed, from the time I get up to the time I go to sleep. Half the time I don't even know what I'm pissed about. It's stupid and I hate it, and if what you're saying is true you hear it all the time, and everything else I don't even want you to hear, too. You get everything from me and I get nothing from you!"

He's trying not to yell. Nobody else knows about the soulbond yet, not even Mila. Not even Yakov. Victor watches him stand with his fists clenched and his chest heaving. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't even move.

 _If you don't want anything to do with me, fine, but stop acting like you do_ , Yuri thinks viciously, and he can see that Victor hears it from the way his mouth turns down and his eyes drop to the ice.

Victor holds out both his hands. Whatever he's done to seal off his side of the bond is still there, but there are both of Victor's hands, bare and offered for Yuri to touch him, to feel the inside of his mind the way Yuri feels his own and Victor feels Yuri's.

Yuri grabs them before Victor can change his mind and pull away.

He feels like he's falling.

Nothing changes, from the outside. All the colors are as bright as they've ever been, the cold smell of the rink just as inviting. But as he's holding Victor's hands, it feels like the presence of everything is... dulled. They look out over the ice together, and while Yuri can still feel the part of himself that wants to skate, wants to throw his body skyward and feel the weightlessness as he comes down, he also feels a dragging, bone-deep exhaustion that feels like it's pressing down on his chest. Or, no, it's more than that, it feels like his chest is being _squeezed_ , and it's only after he gasps in a deep breath that he knows that's coming from Victor, too.

"Is it like this all the time?" he asks, devoid of the anger from before. Feeling this swirl around inside him, like a weight across his shoulders pressing him down, is unbearable.

"It's worse some days than others," Victor answers. He tries to pull his hands away, but Yuri just squeezes tighter.

"About everything?" He can't imagine trying to live like this, trying to skate like this. The second the thought crosses his mind, he feels a burst of frustrated resentment just at the _idea_ of skating.

"Makkachin makes it better." Victor's voice is soft, and the edges of his emotions soften, too. Instead of the overwhelming, crushing weight, there's a little bit of lightness. It's like the delicate flutter of a trapped bird, trying to escape.

"That's..." Yuri doesn't even know what to say. He lets Victor drop his hands this time, the sucking darkness sealed away inside Victor's head again. Yuri doesn't know what his face is doing, but he knows that in his heart all he feels is horror, and something like pity that makes Victor's mouth twist.

"Let's go sit," he says, and leads the way off the ice to a nearby bench. He sits with his elbows on his knees, his back hunched over, looking at his clasped hands.

"That's why you didn't want me to feel you." Yuri remembers the soft expression on Victor's face when he told Yuri _you don't deserve that_ , and understands what he meant, now. He didn't mean that Yuri didn't deserve to see inside his head, like Yuri wasn't good enough. He meant that Yuri didn't deserve to feel that, to absorb that insidious apathy through his skin.

"You're too young to be depressed," Victor says, and he smiles like he's joking, but Yuri knows better now.

"Why?" he asks, before he can think better of it. He doesn't think he's ever been depressed, but he remembers when he was smaller, dedushka patiently explaining that mama's head was sick, and she had forgotten how to be happy. Sometimes the explanation is complicated.

"Put your hands here." Victor takes Yuri's wrists, carefully grabbing him where cloth will stand as a barrier between their skin, and puts his hands on either side of Victor's knee. Yuri can feel it under his palms when Victor straightens his knee out, then bends it again; it crackles and pops like something is grinding between the bones.

"But you had surgery," Yuri says, and feels desperate as he's saying it. He remembers Victor's surgery, him missing an entire season to physical therapy. He tries to wrestle his emotions in his skin, the denial and the bafflement at what he's feeling, but Victor doesn't seem to mind if the way he patiently watches Yuri is any indication.

"It doesn't fix it all the way. I don't have much cartilage left in that knee, and the other one is almost as bad. It hurts to move, out there."

Yuri grabs Victor's hand again, ignoring it when Victor tries to pull away. There is something stronger piercing through the fog of sheer exhaustion that seems to hang over Victor, but it's nothing positive. Yuri knows this feeling intimately. Victor's grief is a powerful thing, and it comes with a furious frustration that Yuri knows, too, from trying to make his body do things it seems to simply refuse to do.

"So you're... retiring I guess?" Yuri asks carefully, squeezing Victor's hand tighter when the immediate denial surges across their bond, followed by a sensation like ugly, hollow laughter. He wants to fix that, a dull ache building in his chest as he thinks about living like this _every day_ , so he adds, "You could probably skate another season."

"If I skate another season, I'll destroy my knees." Victor shakes his head and sighs, long and slow. The grief, the frustration, even the mocking feeling of laughter fades away, pulled down into that same dark well Yuri nearly toppled into.

Yuri's first instinct is to be angry, to tell Victor he's giving up. If Victor retires now, Yuri will never get the chance to beat him on the same stage. He'll never skate against Victor, never challenge him on his own ice. He feels a little lost at the idea that there will be no Victor to chase.

Then, pushed up from the deep well of nothing where Yuri can feel Victor sinking, there's a bright flare of something that cuts through the numb listlessness. It's like the heart of a star, blinding and brilliant, a formless ball of ruthless determination, a little swell of admiration, a touch of fond amusement. Yuri can see the brightness in his mind's eye, see the way it burns through the oppressive darkness.

"That's you, Yura. That's how you are when I think of you." Victor gently takes Yuri's hand away from his own, and Victor's emotions are sealed off again, including the knot of... Yuri doesn't even know what to call it. Yuri-feelings, maybe, a shape of himself in Victor's head.

"I'm not," he tries to protest, uncomfortable at sheer power of it.

"You are. You're going to be what I leave behind, even more than winning medals and breaking records. You're going to come behind me and break my records, win faster, win more."

A bubble of pride swells up in Yuri's chest and pops, spilling over into Victor. He can tell because Victor is smiling, and this time Yuri can see it in his eyes, not just pulled across his face.

"There, see? You believe it of yourself, and I believe it of you. That's why I wanted to give you Agape, because..." Victor trails off, appearing to struggle for words, then reaches out to grab Yuri's hand again. "Because show me what it feels like when you step onto the ice."

Yuri casts his mind back. He concentrates on his memory, the last time he was alone in the middle of the ice for a competition, all eyes on him and a certainty that he was going to win. It's like he's a thousand feet tall, like nobody can touch him. It's joy, fierce and untamed, and a pounding, overwhelming love.

"It's that," Victor says, his smile getting even wider. "It's taking that and pushing it into your program. It's showing that you love the ice, you love to skate, and it's inviting everyone to love it with you, just as much as you do."

Yuri can't see whatever it is Victor is thinking of. The bond doesn't work that way, he's figured out. It's only emotions and some thoughts that travel between them, no concrete images. Even the shining bundle of Yuri-feelings had been more of an impression than a visual. Still, Yuri can feel the eagerness, the anticipation, the excitement that's pushing back the dark cloud. Victor wants to see him skate, and he wants to see him skate _this_ program. There's a wistful longing, too, like Victor wants to see what the program will look like in the hands of someone who can skate it to its fullest, and won't be held back by grinding knees.

Thinking about that, not about how cheesy the music is or how Victor's program would be so much different or how frustrated he is not to have seen any choreo yet, Yuri can understand why Victor chose it for him.

"You think I can skate it the way you're imagining?" Yuri asks. He never would have asked this before feeling the inside of Victor's mind, feeling how worn down and tired he is, feeling firsthand how much the sport has taken from him. He would have taken it as a given. Of course he can skate the program, he's the best.

Victor was the best, and now he has bum knees. One day that will be Yuri. He has to seize every chance while he has it, for as long as he has it.

There's a burst of emotion from Victor that makes Yuri's heart thump hard, an absolute assurance that Yuri has never even felt from himself, completely devoid of doubt, rock-solid. Yuri looks away, clearing his throat, and drops Victor's hand again.

"Okay." He scrubs his sweating palms over his pants. "Okay. So where do we start?"

He looks at Victor's blinding smile and ducks his head, clumsily trying to shove the way he thinks of Victor across the invisible expanse of his bond. He's glorious and infuriating, brilliant and unreliable, everything Yuri has always looked up to and wanted to tear down all at once. It's complicated and tangled and bound up in a steady, unshakeable faith that Victor will always be there.

 _You will, right?_ Yuri adds silently, as he removes his skate guards and steps back onto the ice. He makes sure to push as much of the satisfaction he gets from his blades biting the cold surface across their bond, too, in case reminding Victor of what it used to feel like will help him feel that again.

 _You'd skate in leopard print if I didn't_ , Victor returns, and it comes with that bright burst of Yuri-feelings beside it. Yuri can't help the smile tugging at his own lips as he turns to face the boards.

"Okay," Victor says. "It'll start like this."


End file.
